


Day by day

by clokkerfoot



Series: Stevebucky domesticity series [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Fluff, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Morning Routines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 18:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7449073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clokkerfoot/pseuds/clokkerfoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Bucky take each day as it comes. Mostly, they're happy and harmonic and wonderful. Sometimes, they're disasters. Mostly happy, though. They've had enough angst to last a hundred lifetimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day by day

Just past six o’clock in the morning, Steve’s cell phone—a gift from Tony, months ago—buzzes beside his head. An alarm sounds simultaneously, sending sharp vibrations through the mattress. Bleary-eyed, Steve fumbles to silence the mechanical shrill of the alarm before it wakes Bucky.

He lunges blindly in the dark, then hears the very solid sound of his phone falling onto the floor. Steve sighs at his clumsiness, yawns, then sets about extracting his limbs from Bucky’s. Bucky tends to cling to him in the night, despite the fact they often fall asleep back-to-back. It’s always far too warm under the comforter, so they sleep under a thin blanket that usually ends up bunched around their feet by the morning.

Steve pulls his arm out from beneath Bucky’s head, carefully replacing it with a pillow. Bucky doesn’t stir even a little bit. Steve thinks it’s strange; he wakes at the drop of a hat, something he imagines is leftover from his days in the army, but Bucky could—and has proven that he can—sleep through a thunderstorm.

Once he’s free from Bucky, he sits upright and yawns again. Behind him, Bucky huffs out a sleepy little sigh and rolls over, settling into a new position on his other side. Once his eyes adjusts to the dark, Steve notices that Bucky’s metal arm is cocked out at a peculiar angle behind him. Steve supposes it must be quite uncomfortable and he sits on the edge of the bed for a minute, staring at Bucky’s arm, before images of his shield wedged between the plates flash across his vision. He swallows down the nauseous regret, and climbs off of the mattress as gently as he can, eyes still on Bucky, anxious not to disturb him more than he already has.

They both sleep nude, most nights, unashamed of their bodies. Bucky’s body is one smooth line in the low light, uninterrupted save for the scarring on his left shoulder, and his upper body rises and falls slowly with his perfectly intermittent breaths. It’s almost hypnotic.

Steve tilts the slats on the venetian blinds at both ends of the room, letting in the smallest amount of light from the early dawn outside. As Steve stands by the window farthest from the bed and watches the quiet street, the street lamps flicker off, one by one. The horizon hums with a steady orange glow, bleeding into the black sky.

He turns away from the sunrise and searches for his sweatpants and matching hoodie. They're beneath a pile of Bucky’s clothes, crumpled and creased, but he pulls them on anyway. Steve slips out of the bedroom as quietly as he can, padding across the floor on tiptoe, opening every set of blinds as he passes them. The early morning newspaper has already been pushed through the letterbox, presumably by an exhausted teenager who, like Steve, woke at the crack of dawn. He flicks through the first few pages as he steps into his running shoes.

_AVENGERS SAVE TRAIN - LAWSUIT FILED AGAINST CAPTAIN AMERICA BY INJURED PASSENGER._

Steve sighs at the headline on the fifth page and throws the newspaper, opened to that article, into the table in the middle of the kitchen.

His phone is on the counter beside the front door, and he decides to leave it there. Bucky won't be awake for another half hour or so, and there's no one else who would call him so early in the morning. The chill of the air outside bites at Steve’s cheeks and nose when he steps outside, and he lets out a long, slow breath. He sets off running before the cold can really get to him, and he focuses on his breathing as he moves.

Bucky fills his thoughts while he runs. It's _always_ Bucky, especially when he isn't with Steve. He occupies a space in the forefront of Steve’s mind, always. Even when he was seventy years dead, Bucky was never far from Steve’s thoughts.

Six miles into his run, Steve runs past Peggy’s care-home. It’s still silent, the drapes drawn on all the windows, and Steve wonders if Peggy is dreaming about him. When they last talked—their conversation had lasted for just over twenty minutes before she forgot Steve was alive, which was a long time, considering—she admitted that they often dreamed about him, and Steve has never forgotten that.

Fifteen miles in, Steve runs past Sam’s house. Sam is, apparently, still asleep. Steve sighs at the dark windows of his friend’s home, and for half a second he selfishly considers pelting the bedroom window with pebbles so Sam will wake up, but continues on his run without a pause.

Just under an hour after he sets of, Steve returns home. He has covered just shy of twenty miles, at a fairly relaxed pace, and the sun has truly begun to rise. The windows on the front of his home reflect the sunrise, bright and beautiful behind him. Again, he finds himself thinking of Bucky. For a brief moment, he forgets that Bucky is only twenty or so feet away inside the house, alive and well, and he mourns for the sunrises spent with him on rooftops in Brooklyn before the war. Sometimes, he does forget that Bucky is still with him. Sometimes, that old grief catches up with him. It’s unavoidable, but he has learned to cope.

He toes his running shoes off at the door, then tucks them into the rack just behind it. Bucky, as usual, has completely forgone the shoe rack and has left his black boots in an untidy pile right beside the rack. Steve smiles in spite of himself. He slips into the bedroom, noting Bucky’s still form, and fetches a small pile of clothes from his dresser—just jeans and a lightly patterned shirt as Tony doesn’t insist on a dress code for meetings in the morning—and heads for a shower.

The steam clears his sinuses as he stands under the spray of the shower, and he stays there, soapy and too-hot, until his skin flushes bright red. He changes into his day-clothes in the bathroom, briefly dancing around on one leg with his jeans refusing to pull up his damp legs, then walks through to the kitchen to make breakfast.

Bucky wakes ravenously hungry, most days, so Steve makes enough breakfast to feed four people and has it ready for when he wakes up. He makes pancakes, eggs, bacon, toast, and even slices up a banana and a couple of apples. His weekly food bill is far, far higher than it used to be, especially since he and Bucky moved in together. Bucky loves to eat, and Steve loves to cook. It's a recipe for disaster or harmony, depending on who you ask.

Steve nabs a thin slice of apple from the plate in the middle of the table and munches on it slowly while he tends to the bacon. He flips the meat in the pan, stepping back as it sizzles and spits hot oil at him. The smell fills the kitchen, rich and warm and homely all at once.

He is just beginning to wonder where Bucky is when he hears a tired voice speak up from the doorway to the kitchen, “Morning.”

Steve smirks down at the hissing frying pan and glances over his shoulder. Bucky is stood in the doorway—thankfully, now wearing a pair of black boxer shorts (which do little to disguise what’s beneath them)—yawning and stretching. There are sleep marks from the mattress protector streaking up one side of his face, and Steve marvels at how content Bucky appears.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Steve replies cheerfully. He flips the bacon again, then transfers it to a plate on the table. Bucky flexes his metal arm out to the side, and Steve tries not to stare at the rippling plates along his forearm. It's been a long time since he stopped worrying and constantly asking questions about Bucky’s arm, and he's come to realise that it's just as much a part of Bucky as Steve’s own left arm is a part of him.

He returns to the frying pan and cracks a few eggs into it, stirring them with a spatula. Along with the eggs, he throws in some salt, some fresh herbs that he plucks from the shallow bed on the windowsill, and some black pepper.

“Had a late one last night, didn’tcha?” Steve comments as Bucky yawns again, knowing full well that Bucky went to sleep the same time as him. Bucky has always been the more easily fatigued of the two of them, and Steve endlessly pokes fun at that.

Bucky hums in a _shut up, you six o’clock riser_ kind of way, then wraps his arms around Steve’s waist. Steve lets out a breath automatically, allowing himself to relax in Bucky’s arms. He's finding it remarkably difficult to get bored of Bucky touching him. Every moment they're together, private or not, Bucky finds a way to touch him, maintaining the new physical connection they have formed over the past few months.

“Scrambled eggs?” Bucky asks, quietly, his teeth at Steve’s earlobe, harmlessly nibbling at his skin and sending shivers rocketing down his spine.

“Of course,” Steve replies, closing his eyes. Bucky wraps his arms tighter around Steve’s waist, shucking his shirt up and pressing his fingers into the soft flesh at Steve’s hips. Bucky presses a warm kiss to the nape of his neck, and Steve sighs, “Tha’s nice, Buck.”

“Mm,” Bucky hums, “I know. I missed you yesterday.”

“I missed you too.”

“Of course you did. I'm loveable as hell.”

Steve laughs and opens his eyes. He flips the mass of egg in the frying pan, then turns in Bucky’s arms until they're facing one another. Bucky grins lazily and leans forward to kiss Steve on the mouth. Steve accepts the kiss, then wraps his arms around Bucky’s neck. He smiles against his lips, and holds Bucky tighter.

It's been years since either of them have had any interest whatsoever in sex, and Steve doesn’t mind. Back in the forties, they fooled around and slept together behind _very_ securely locked doors because they had no other way of being intimate with one another. Now, they both know that just being close to each other is intimate enough. After all, Steve loves Bucky for who he is, not his body, and he doesn't need to want him in a sexual way to enjoy his company and his touch.

“There's pancakes on the table,” Steve mumbles when Bucky begins to breathe a little more heavily. It's too early for _eating_ , let alone _necking_.

Bucky pulls away at once and pads over to the table. Steve blows out a breath and turns back to the eggs. They're a little singed, but he serves them anyway, loading up Bucky’s plate with a spoonful of them.

“You should get a frilly white apron like the one your ma used to wear,” Bucky comments. He's a little flushed and grinning cockily, so Steve doesn’t feel bad when he whacks his hand flat against the side of his head, “Okay, I deserved that. _Sorry_.”

Steve sits opposite Bucky and switches on the radio that sits between them. Bucky nudges the plate of buttered toast towards Steve, then huffs and munches at his own toast in what is undeniably an annoyed way when Steve refuses to take a slice. Bucky doesn't like it when Steve doesn't eat _immediately_ , even though he knows Steve eats breakfast at work with Nat and Clint—the other early risers. Steve concentrates on the news as he watches Bucky eat.

“— _rescued forty three passengers from the crash site. Minor injuries were reported by several passengers, but no fatalities occurred. One elderly passenger allegedly suffered a severe injury at the hands of Captain America, and has filed a lawsuit, although evidence in support of the claim has yet to be brought forward. In other news_ —”

Steve fixes Bucky with a stare. Bucky cowers in his seat, staring at the mountain of food on his plate.

“Severe injury?”

Bucky shovels three forkfuls of egg into his mouth in half a second, then shrugs, cheeks ballooned out.

“I read that in the paper, too. What did you do?”

Bucky smacks the paper across the table when Steve reaches for it, sending it flying to the ground. Steve sighs.

They swap, sometimes. Bucky takes Steve’s place on the field (the Avengers couldn’t claim the Winter Soldier as their latest recruit, so they just hired him as an ‘assistant’ instead) while Steve deals with other things. Bucky wears his helmet in the field and goes clean shaven, so it's difficult to distinguish between him and the _real_ Cap while he’s on the move.

Whenever Bucky is out, Steve does publicity work where he shows his face, and worries about Bucky the entire day. It’s fun, though, confusing the press—one Captain America slinging his shield around wherever the trouble is, while another slightly taller Captain America reads to kids at the New York City Library.

“I broke her leg,” Bucky mumbles, under his breath, and Steve heart just about stops.

“You broke an old woman’s _leg_?” Steve exclaims, dropping his fork. Bucky has always been more vicious with their shield, but never quite _that_ vicious.

“She hit me first,” Bucky mutters, holding up his flesh arm to show a purple bruise on the inside of his wrist, leading a slender line right up the middle of his forearm. Steve wants to laugh, in a bitter sort of way, “Scared women with canes are _wicked_ creatures.”

“Still,” Steve persists, wishing desperately that he had a mug of strong coffee in front of him, “You broke her _leg_. Her whole leg, Buck!”

“And if I wasn’t _me_ , she woulda broken my whole arm!”

Steve doesn't push the matter. Bucky has a genuinely apologetic expression on his face, so Steve settles for giving him a dark look that both of them know means Bucky is in the dog-house for a while. Bucky, rightfully, hangs his head in shame, and spends the rest of breakfast slowly chewing a single piece of bacon, hardly making a sound. By the time seven thirty rolls around and it's time for Steve to head out for work, he feels more forgiving.

“That should’ve healed by now,” he says, gesturing at Bucky’s bruise. They both have ridiculously quick heal-times, especially for bruises, and it's unusual for them to carry a bruise for more than a few hours, let alone an entire day, “You feelin’ alright?”

Bucky pauses, as if he’s performing a self-diagnostic, then shrugs, “‘M fine. Just tired. Anyways, we should be worrying about _you_. I heard you had to spend the whole day with Stark yesterday while I was off break— er, saving people.”

Steve shrugs, choosing to ignore Bucky’s slip-up. He really does look sorry, at least, “You get used to him after a while.”

“I want to wring his fucking neck.”

“I said a _while_ ,” Steve snaps, not really meaning it. He sighs and rises from his chair, scooping up empty plates as he moves. He leaves the small pile of plates next to the sink—on no-action days, Bucky does some of the housework while Steve takes the morning shift of meetings, then Steve does the rest while Bucky takes the afternoon shift—and gathers the things he’ll need for the day.

He and Bucky have different uniforms. They look identical, of course, but Bucky’s fits a little slimmer on the shoulders, a little wider on the thighs, and is designed to allow the plates on his arm to move freely. Bucky has left his uniform draped over a chair in the corner of their room, sweaty and covered in rubble dust. Steve’s is hung neatly from a hanger on the back of the door, just as Bucky’s _should_ be. He folds it carefully and settles it in the bottom of his backpack—it's Bucky’s backpack, really, with a strap-clip that sits in the middle of the wearer’s chest and keeps it still. He also fetches his brown leather jacket from the back of the door and pulls it on.

When he gets back into the kitchen, Bucky is aimlessly pushing a slice of bacon around his plate with his fork, frowning down at the table. Steve zips up his jacket as he walks across the kitchen, “What’s up? You’re not in _that_ much trouble.”

Bucky shrugs, stabbing the bacon, “I just hate you leaving so early, tha’s all. The traffic’s shit nowadays, and I don’t trust your bike one bit.”

“The Harleys are much safer now, Buck. And you’ll be with me in a couple of hours, anyway. Stop fretting,” Steve moves over to Bucky and ruffles his hair—it’s still longer than it used to be in the forties, but not nearly as long as it was when he was the Winter Soldier—before pressing a kiss to the crown of Bucky’s head. They both might’ve been through hell and back, but Bucky still smells like _Bucky_ , and God, Steve can’t stay mad at him for long.

He leans his cheek against Bucky’s head with a sigh. Bucky reaches up with his arm and hooks his hand around the back of Steve’s neck, holding him in place.

“It’s my _job_ to fret about you, Stevie.”

Steve chest tightens at the nickname, and senseless worries about his asthma rush into his head. He’s not struggled to catch a breath after climbing a flight of stairs for a long, long time, but breathlessness still puts him on edge.

He moves and kisses Bucky’s neck just below his jaw, right on the ticklish spot that makes him squeal and flinch. Steve just kisses harder when Bucky yelps out his name, sucking at the soft skin until Bucky freezes up and stops wriggling.

“You're gonna give me a damn hickie,” Bucky complains through tight lips.

Steve hums against his neck in response and sinks his teeth into Bucky’s skin, just deep enough to make him gasp. Bucky’s hand on his neck tightens until his fingernails dig in deep, presumably leaving four little red crescent-shaped marks behind his ear. Bucky keens in a high voice, arching away from the back of his chair.

Finally, Steve pulls away, and Bucky lets out a sigh of relief. Steve was always the subject of torture by tickling back when he was too scrawny to match Bucky’s strength, so it feels good to finally get one on him, even if he knows that Bucky could easily throw him through the nearest wall if he wanted to.

“Guess you never forgave me for the tickling, huh?” Bucky says, breathlessly, when Steve presses yet another kiss to the crown of his head.

Steve smiles against Bucky’s sweet-smelling hair and hums his confirmation, “‘Bout time I got a real shot at doing that to you.”

“Whatever,” Bucky drawls, “Be safe today, pal.”

Steve steps away from Bucky, breath light in his chest, stomach trembling with happy butterflies. He picks up his backpack and slings it over his shoulders before fastening it across his chest. A glance at his wristwatch reveals that he’s already five minutes late, so he heads for the door.

His foot is on the doorstep when he hears Bucky shift behind him, voice soft.

“Steve.”

“Yeah?” Steve turns automatically, meeting Bucky’s gaze.

“You look _far_ too proper to be my boyfriend,” Bucky leans forward and unzips his jacket down to the buckle of his backpack and undoes the top button on his shirt. He reaches up and musses Steve’s hair, flashing a grin the whole time, “There. Perfectly disheveled. Have a nice morning without me.”

 

* * *

 

It doesn't happen often anymore—not nearly as much as it used to—but sometimes Steve comes home to find that Bucky has retreated into his old room. Steve hears noises of despair and self hate from the spare bedroom, but knows that Bucky just needs a few hours to organise his thoughts. The rougher days take their toll on Bucky over time, and it sometimes takes him a while to figure out where the Winter Soldier ends and the man Steve Rogers loves begins.

Their daily routine is broken, only briefly, and Steve does everything he can to pull Bucky from his thoughts as quickly as he can. It always works, in the end, and when Bucky finally comes out of his room, sweaty and hungry, it doesn’t take Steve long to coax him into awareness.

He leads Bucky into the bathroom, waiting until the shower is steaming hot before he even considers letting him step under the spray. Bucky stands there, naked but unashamed, silently allowing Steve to clean the sweat and grime away from his skin. Steve pulls his fingers gently through Bucky’s soapy hair and savours every second of it. Steve cleans under Bucky’s arms, down the crease of his back, and passes soapy fingers between his legs and buttocks.

At times, Bucky shivers when Steve touches him down there. Steve has never asked, never questions the tremors that pulse stiffly through Bucky’s muscles, but he wonders if Bucky suffered more at the hands of the Soviets than he could ever say.

Once Bucky is clean and dry, they return to the kitchen. Steve places a bowl of something - usually dry cereal, occasionally chopped and sugared fruit if Bucky’s looking especially pale - in front of Bucky, and he sits there, slowly but dutifully eating, as Steve prepares shaving cream and hones the cutthroat razor.

He does not miss the way Bucky’s eyes follow the path of the razor as Steve moves it against the strop.

“They make electric razors nowadays,” Steve says as he passes the razor over Bucky’s skin. It's sharper than any other knife in the house, but it still scratches uncomfortably against the wiry hairs on Bucky’s cheeks, obnoxiously loud in the silence of their kitchen. The noise makes both of them twitch.

“I know,” Bucky replies. Steve smiles, not meeting Bucky’s eyes as he speaks, knowing that Bucky has finally come back to himself, “I prefer it this way. I get to stare at your pretty face and make you all squirmy.”

 _Welcome back, Bucky_ , Steve thinks, and they go from there.


End file.
